Speaker 1: This is on the Job, a podcast about finding your
Speaker 1: life's work. On the job, is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. This season, we're bringing you stories of
Speaker 1: folks following their passion to carve their own career path.
Speaker 1: For this episode, we look at a pretty non traditional
Speaker 1: career path, being a private investigator. It's a complicated line
Speaker 1: of work that comes with a lot of assumptions being
Speaker 1: made about it and maybe something a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't feel like they're cut out foreign paper. But sometimes
Speaker 1: doing a job is less about your hard qualifications and
Speaker 1: more about the bigger ideas that drive you. Now that
Speaker 1: you know that we're talking to a real PI today,
Speaker 1: you probably have some idea in your head of what
Speaker 1: that means. So let's get that out of the way. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what do people say to you when they hear
Speaker 1: you're a PI. The first thing is that everyone goes, wow,
Speaker 1: that must be exciting. Well, I've been doing this for
Speaker 1: almost a half a century, and I don't think exciting
Speaker 1: is the word that I would use anymore. Maybe at
Speaker 1: one time, but not anymore. This is Kitty Kitty Hailey.
Speaker 1: I am a professional investigator, sometimes called a PI or
Speaker 1: a private investigator, and I am old enough to know better.
Speaker 1: Kitty works and lives in Philadelphia. She got fiery red hair,
Speaker 1: she's put together, kind of looks like she might be
Speaker 1: a kindergarten teacher. You wouldn't look at her and think
Speaker 1: she's a PI, which is also what people say to
Speaker 1: her when they find out what she does. And then
Speaker 1: they start to tell me how they would be a
Speaker 1: good investigator. And they tell me either how they located
Speaker 1: their long lost second cousin or they found their husband cheating,
Speaker 1: and they watch all the cop shows on TV. The
Speaker 1: thing is, Kitty is pretty much the opposite of what
Speaker 1: you'd see on a cop show. She's been an investigator
Speaker 1: in many forms, but currently most of what she does
Speaker 1: is investigate the police in cases where someone is wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted or an officer abuses their authority. So no, I'm
Speaker 1: not a police investigator. All right. So you've done a
Speaker 1: lot of different things in your career, but boiled down,
Speaker 1: what is it that you do. I gather information, period,
Speaker 1: That's what I do. I don't censor it, I don't
Speaker 1: editorialize it. I am a fact finder. However, the facts
Speaker 1: that are find are about some very interesting and unusual situations.
Speaker 1: Right now, Kitty is a criminal investigator, but for a
Speaker 1: while she was what was called a full service investigator,
Speaker 1: which means she did a little bit of everything, domestic people, cheating,
Speaker 1: locating missing people. Now she does civil rights work, investigating
Speaker 1: cases similar to George Floyd's where there's been an incident
Speaker 1: with the police. My other clients are incarcerated and they
Speaker 1: may not be guilty, So it's an interesting mixture of work,
Speaker 1: but primarily I do civil rights and post conviction work.
Speaker 1: While I was asking Kitty questions, I was surprised by
Speaker 1: how much goes into being a PI that you'd never
Speaker 1: know without talking to one. But some of the time,
Speaker 1: just like on TV, Katy ends up in a courtroom
Speaker 1: in front of a jury, presenting the facts and making
Speaker 1: her case. Do you like being in a courtroom? I
Speaker 1: love it. It's the best time because I think we're
Speaker 1: all different people at different times. I'm not pretending, but
Speaker 1: I am performing. I'm performing the Kitty Hailey who is
Speaker 1: the investigator. I mean sometimes I'm a grandmom, and you know,
Speaker 1: I sit on the floor with a couple of grandkids
Speaker 1: and I play games and I make them cookies and
Speaker 1: do all the things that grandmas do, but when I'm
Speaker 1: in a courtroom, have control. Long before she was dominating
Speaker 1: courtrooms and swaying juries, young Kitty Haley grew up a
Speaker 1: pretty straight laced, brainy kid. I was a young geek.
Speaker 1: I read a lot of books. I mean, Nancy Drew
Speaker 1: was my best friend for the longest time, so maybe
Speaker 1: that was part of it. I don't know. She had
Speaker 1: a brother and a sister. They were a tight family unit,
Speaker 1: had dinner every night with mom and dad. We're Jewish,
Speaker 1: so we went to synagogue every Friday night together. I
Speaker 1: don't think any of us ever got in trouble once
Speaker 1: in our entire lives. Even so, growing up in a
Speaker 1: non Jewish neighborhood, she saw a lot of prejudice against
Speaker 1: her family. There were places she couldn't go, things she
Speaker 1: couldn't do. So I knew what it was like to
Speaker 1: be an outcast. I knew what it was like to
Speaker 1: have in equity. And I think if I had not
Speaker 1: been an investigator, I probably would have ended up in
Speaker 1: some sort of social work at some point in time.
Speaker 1: Because the inequities of the world are so great and
Speaker 1: I can't stand a look at them. I need to
Speaker 1: be a part of the solution, not accorded the problem.
Speaker 1: In high school, she was great at art, so she
Speaker 1: went to school for it, and afterwards she got a
Speaker 1: job teaching art at a high school in Camden, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: It was a predominantly black school during the Civil Rights movement,
Speaker 1: and Kitty was asked to leave the school system after
Speaker 1: being blamed for causing an uprising against the school system.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't stop it. Apparently, she just helped
Speaker 1: the students with their manifesto. Yeah. I think that was
Speaker 1: my problem, help them to put their manifesto together. And
Speaker 1: the problem was that I did during school time, during
Speaker 1: school copy machines, So yeah, I shouldn't have done that maybe. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: this is when she had encountered with a police captain
Speaker 1: who ended up becoming her husband. He was branching off
Speaker 1: from the force to start his own PI firm, and
Speaker 1: she started to help out while she got another teaching
Speaker 1: job at Rutgers. And I worked as a teacher counselor
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, doing investigative work part time,
Speaker 1: and then eventually just transitioned over because it's what I
Speaker 1: really wanted to do. So twenty four years old. Kitty
Speaker 1: Haley was a PI, but it definitely wasn't glamorous. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a small agency initially, and it was really
Speaker 1: it was really difficult because it was just my husband enough.
Speaker 1: They took whatever work they could get, which was mostly
Speaker 1: domestic work. People cheating, abuse cases, custody issues, families stealing
Speaker 1: from each other, messy stuff. My kids went to college
Speaker 1: because I did domestic work. I mean, God, bless cheating people.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Infidelity pays the bills. Yeah, absolutely, the
Speaker 1: stereotypical stuff people think of when you're a PI, sneaking around,
Speaker 1: following people, looking in their windows to see when the
Speaker 1: light goes on or off. Yeah, I've done all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I sat on surveillance for days and nights and weeks,
Speaker 1: and I used to bring my kids on surveillance when
Speaker 1: they were little. Sometimes they'd be so busy that her
Speaker 1: husband would be working right through bedtime when Kitty had
Speaker 1: to go do her surveillance work. So she'd throw the
Speaker 1: kids in the back of the car with a blanket
Speaker 1: and I'd go out. We'd all stood on surveillance together.
Speaker 1: I read them books, I tell them stories as we
Speaker 1: were driving. You hook them in with seatbelts and give
Speaker 1: them things to play with, and every once in a
Speaker 1: while I go, Okay, guys, hang on, mama's gotta go.
Speaker 1: You did what we had to do. We'll get back
Speaker 1: to our story in a second. First, a word from
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic takes pride in
Speaker 1: a job well done. This is you. But to get
Speaker 1: an honest day's work, you need a callback. You need
Speaker 1: a job. Express Employment Professionals can help. We'll connect you
Speaker 1: to the right company. We're committed to your success and
Speaker 1: never charge a fee to find you a job. Express
Speaker 1: Nose Jobs. Get to know Express find your location at
Speaker 1: expresspros dot com or on the Express Jobs app. Now
Speaker 1: back to on the job. Despite the life of starting
Speaker 1: a PI firm, Kitty was hooked. I loved the excitement,
Speaker 1: the adventure and it was creative in its own way. Also,
Speaker 1: having a background in art made me capable of observing
Speaker 1: things that other people didn't see. She picked up on details.
Speaker 1: She could recreate rooms that she was invited into during
Speaker 1: theft investigations, and a client might be able to point
Speaker 1: out the thing that they said was stolen from them.
Speaker 1: This is one of the many skills that's helped Kitty
Speaker 1: stay in the game as long as she has. What
Speaker 1: makes someone good at what you do? Wow, I always
Speaker 1: tell people who are interested in my field, they have
Speaker 1: to be able to do several things really well. They
Speaker 1: have to be able to think. You have to be
Speaker 1: able to think and analyze. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to observe and put your own personal prejudices out of
Speaker 1: the way while you're observing what happened or what the
Speaker 1: evidence is. She says. You also have to know a
Speaker 1: lot about the law and how the court system works,
Speaker 1: so that you know what constitutes evidence. Evidence is really
Speaker 1: important because everything you do has to be admissible in
Speaker 1: a court of law or you can't do it. One
Speaker 1: of the most overlook skills, she says, writing You've got
Speaker 1: to be able to put together a good report. If
Speaker 1: you can't write what you did to explain it to
Speaker 1: an attorney, then you might as well never have done
Speaker 1: the work. Basically, you might do seventy hours worth of
Speaker 1: surveillance and finding information, computer research and interviewing people, and
Speaker 1: all you can give to an attorney is a five
Speaker 1: page report. So it's like a master class in essay writing.
Speaker 1: Sounds like there's a lot of skills they don't tell
Speaker 1: you about on Law and Order SVU. Yes, so you
Speaker 1: have to be able to deal with people, communicate well,
Speaker 1: and know how to build so that you can keep
Speaker 1: your job. That's the whole thing. It's a business. People
Speaker 1: forget that. They think this is oh, this is great.
Speaker 1: But if you're working for yourself, you've got to do
Speaker 1: all of that or good work for somebody else, which
Speaker 1: you can do. Katie says. There are so many respects
Speaker 1: of the work. You can always try it all out
Speaker 1: and figure out what you'd like to specialize in. Especially
Speaker 1: in the age of social media. You could be a techie,
Speaker 1: you could work online investigations. There's a ton of different
Speaker 1: ways to go about it. That's not what I like
Speaker 1: to do. It's not my comfort zone. Put me in
Speaker 1: front of somebody and I will interview them until I
Speaker 1: get every lest bit of information out of them, and
Speaker 1: that I do well. Kitty says, in the beginning, she
Speaker 1: was saying yes to any job that came her way.
Speaker 1: She had to. That can get you in trouble. There
Speaker 1: was a nice couple who came to see us. They
Speaker 1: had just come from a funeral actually, and so they
Speaker 1: were well dressed, and she wanted us to find her
Speaker 1: missing children. The woman's ex husband had taken the kids.
Speaker 1: It's not uncommon in these cases, so Kittie got involved,
Speaker 1: only to later find out that without their nice clothing,
Speaker 1: they were members of the Hell's Angels who were involved
Speaker 1: in a dispute with a rival gang. We were right
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, and I was stupid. I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about this. It was my first introduction
Speaker 1: to anything criminal. I only learned about it when I
Speaker 1: left their house and four big black SUVs pulled me
Speaker 1: off to the side of the road and four people
Speaker 1: identify themselves as the FBI and wanted to know what
Speaker 1: I was doing in the house. That was not something
Speaker 1: that a twenty four year old should have to go through.
Speaker 1: It was scary. Do they make you second guess? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, like, what am I doing? No? It maybe
Speaker 1: learned to be more careful about who my clients are,
Speaker 1: at least to know what was really expected of me,
Speaker 1: Because my clients right now, some of them are guilty
Speaker 1: as hell. You know some of them are innocent, but
Speaker 1: you don't know until you investigate it. So I need
Speaker 1: to I've learned to investigate my clients as well as
Speaker 1: to investigate what they want me to investigate. Do you
Speaker 1: ever do jobs for people that you kind of don't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable doing. Yeah, but I'm not them. I'm still
Speaker 1: doing my job. So take any case where there's a
Speaker 1: prosecutor and a defendant. Whether she's hired by the defense
Speaker 1: or the prosecution, her job doesn't change. So if there
Speaker 1: was a bullet, we're going to find a bullet. If
Speaker 1: you have a witness who says she saw X Y
Speaker 1: and Z, bolt investigator is going to find x Y
Speaker 1: and Z. The prosecution investigator and the defense investigator are
Speaker 1: both going to find the same information because the facts
Speaker 1: don't change. I'm not supporting a person, I'm finding out facts. Still,
Speaker 1: she knows that what she does has a huge impact
Speaker 1: on people's lives. When I ask if she's okay with that,
Speaker 1: she tells me about a case where a guy called
Speaker 1: Kitty saying he suspected his wife was cheating on him
Speaker 1: every day when he went to work. He wanted her
Speaker 1: to find out. Turns out his wife was with a
Speaker 1: neighbor next door. Kitty had the evidence and testified in
Speaker 1: their court hearing the following morning. I'm in my office
Speaker 1: and I get a phone call and it's the woman
Speaker 1: who I testified against, and she says to me, how
Speaker 1: can you sleep with yourself doing the ugly work that
Speaker 1: you do, spying on people, peering in windows? How do
Speaker 1: you sleep with yourself? And I remember saying to her,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't sleep with myself. I speak with
Speaker 1: my husband. You out her hand, sleep with somebody else
Speaker 1: who says this. So no, I'm not the people I'm
Speaker 1: working for or against. I'm still me with my own
Speaker 1: ethics and my own morals. But if in the process
Speaker 1: I help somebody make a life decision that will change
Speaker 1: the course of their life, or allow them to make
Speaker 1: an informed decision, then I've done a good job. Kitty
Speaker 1: has a deep respect for the impact her work has,
Speaker 1: good or bad, which is why over the last many
Speaker 1: years she's become a nationally recognized investigative ethicist. She literally
Speaker 1: wrote the book on ethical standards for being an investigator,
Speaker 1: and she tours the country giving lectures on how to
Speaker 1: do this job in a responsible way. Recently, she was
Speaker 1: doing a session with a pretty elite group of investigators
Speaker 1: and somebody asked me the question, how do you show
Speaker 1: empathy and it just blew me for a loop. And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't I feel it being a PI
Speaker 1: sounds like a cool job, and Kitty says it is.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side, there are times when you
Speaker 1: are talking to a person on the worst day of
Speaker 1: their life, people who have lost a loved one or
Speaker 1: were a victim of a crime, people scared for their life.
Speaker 1: And if you don't appreciate that, then maybe you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing this job. You've got to understand that everyone
Speaker 1: has been traumatized in some way, and I'm a to
Speaker 1: their horror and I need to record it. I need
Speaker 1: to be able to elicit the information from them so
Speaker 1: that I can take their statements so that when I
Speaker 1: present it in court it has meaning and gravatas, and
Speaker 1: that comes from respect. Talking with Kitty reminded me of
Speaker 1: something pretty amazing I heard the famous therapist and author
Speaker 1: Esther Perel say on a podcast once when she was
Speaker 1: talking about our relationship to our jobs. She said, next
Speaker 1: time you're at dinner with new friends or at a
Speaker 1: party and you're about to ask the routine question what
Speaker 1: do you do for a living? Instead ask what would
Speaker 1: you do if you weren't doing the job you do now.
Speaker 1: That's always stuck with me because I feel like so
Speaker 1: many of us write off what we can do for
Speaker 1: work because we don't have the education for it, or
Speaker 1: we didn't grow up around it, or we don't look there.
Speaker 1: But sometimes what qualifies you for a job is your
Speaker 1: deepest beliefs, the thing that gets you up in the morning.
Speaker 1: Kitty still looks like a high school art teacher, but
Speaker 1: her desire led her to being one of the most
Speaker 1: respected investigators in her industry. That desire she had as
Speaker 1: a young nerdy outcast to be part of the solution
Speaker 1: rather than the problem. I asked her if she still
Speaker 1: felt that way about her work. Oh, my, every day.
Speaker 1: You know, we work so hard on a case and
Speaker 1: don't always see the end of it. Sometimes all the
Speaker 1: information goes to an attorney and you never know what happened. Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of that. That's some very delayed satisfaction,
Speaker 1: if any at all. Yeah. Okay, So I worked with
Speaker 1: a gentleman from Philadelphia. I could say his name because
Speaker 1: he is now free. It's jim Dennis. He was wrongfully
Speaker 1: incarcerated almost twenty years ago. Jimmie Dennis is an R
Speaker 1: and B musician in Philadelphia, and when he was twenty one,
Speaker 1: he was wrongfully convicted of our murder. No physical evidence,
Speaker 1: no weapon, no DNA, and he was put on death row.
Speaker 1: Kitty worked on his case, and eighteen years later I
Speaker 1: was sitting in a coffee shop and I got a
Speaker 1: telephone call and a voice said, missus Kitty, I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you, and I said, who is this?
Speaker 1: He said, this is Jimmy Dennis. I'm on my way
Speaker 1: home from prison. And I said in that coffee shop
Speaker 1: and cried like a baby. It was so wonderful to
Speaker 1: know that work I had done for eighteen years had
Speaker 1: finally resulted in someone going home to a family a
Speaker 1: baby he had never held, a child he had not seen.
Speaker 1: You know, it was somebody whose life was able to
Speaker 1: be not put hole again, but at least she was
Speaker 1: able to live a life outside of the four walls
Speaker 1: of an eight by ten seven, which he was in
Speaker 1: for eighteen years. You know, that was That's humbling. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I love what I do. It's not easy, it's hard work,
Speaker 1: it's long hours, and it's so free and satisfying. It's great.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to do it until I can't stand
Speaker 1: up anymore. For On the Job, I'm Otus Gray. To
Speaker 1: learn more about Kitty and her work, go to Kitty
Speaker 1: Hailey dot com. Thanks for listening to On the Job,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. The season of
Speaker 1: On the Job is produced by Audiation. The episodes written
Speaker 1: and produced by me Otis Gray. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed by Matt Noble for
Speaker 1: Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York. Music
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on iHeartRadio and Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: If you liked what you heard, please consider rating and
Speaker 1: reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. For more inspiring stories about
Speaker 1: discovering your life's work, Audition